1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to medical imaging, and more particularly, to determining the short and long axis viewing planes for cardiac image acquisitions.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
In the field of medical imaging, images oriented around the short and long axis normals of the heart are the standard format for evaluation by clinicians. The orientation of the heart, and therefore its short and long axis normals, are unique to individuals. Thus, in acquiring such images, the orientation of the individual's heart and its associated coordinate frame (short axis, long axis, and the direction orthogonal to both) need to be determined.
In related art, an average Left Ventricular coordinate system is computed from a database of 50 subjects and used as a starting point. From this initial short axis orientation, several short axis images are sampled. Then the Expectation-Maximization algorithm is used to segment the left and right ventricles in these images. The centroids of the Left Ventricle (“LV”) are found in the short axis image stack. These are connected to form the final short axis normal. Then the Right Ventricular point farthest from this axis is found and used to determine the long-axis normal direction. Since ventricular shapes can vary, some even being banana-shaped, this method does not always yield an appropriate coordinate frame.